Lesley's Bio

April 13, 2009

Sousveillance means we watch the watchers

Forty seconds of jumpy film have challenged Britain’s senior
police in a way courts, inquiries, MPs and grieving families have
generally failed to do. Citizen journalism is in the news and the
Metropolitan police is in the dock because of phone video evidence
showing the last moments of Ian Tomlinson -- the London news vendor who
died during the G20 riots. The footage was recorded by an unlikely
people’s hero -- an American fund manager on a business trip from New
York – and unlikely bedfellows have been created as a result.

New and old media; citizens and journalists; amateurs and
professionals; witnesses and analysts; Americans and Brits; protestors
and onlookers – groups previously in some tension have pored over that
film and forced accountability from authorities preparing to sweep the
whole incident under the carpet.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission was wrong footed. It was
slow to realise a City police investigation wouldn’t suffice and slow
to start work. Two days after the video was published the IPCC had
still failed to contact the officer featured.

The Metropolitan Police was caught napping. At first it claimed Mr
Tomlinson had no contact with police, then suggested demonstrators
delayed the arrival of medical help and only finally suspended the
officer filmed when the video was made public.
Will that officer be prosecuted?

Thirty years ago this month Blair Peach died after an Anti-Nazi League protest against a National Front meeting in London.

No police officer was ever convicted after evidence of a police assault
on the 33 year-old New Zealand-born special needs teacher.